What Tooke so long?
From Mmc
What Tooke so long?
Alex Williamson October 9, 2007 5:30 PM
It is a damning indictment of Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) that it has taken an 194-page report to clarify its faults. What is worse is that much of the report is common sense. Most of the problems were anticipated prior to the institution of the doomed training system and the recommendations are largely a return to the tried and tested system rather than a radical reform.
The continued muddling and re-labelling of doctors' posts has done nothing to clarify the role of doctors within posts. The problem is so bad that many of the non-medical staff within hospitals have no clue as to the new "badges" given to juniors - and if they struggle to tell the difference between a foundation doctor and a specialty registrar, and how these compare with the old senior house officer and specialist registrar, what hope have the public got?
While Professor John Tooke's report identifies the major problems in training doctors, there appears to be little in the way of solutions. It is correct to state that a large number of talented young doctors have been marginalised by the new system and placed into potentially dead end FTSTA (fixed term specialist training appointments) posts, no solution as to how to help these demoralised doctors has been offered.
Medical education and training needs to be a continual evolution adapting to the demands of a changing population. This experiment in training and appointing should hopefully provide a long-term reminder of the problems of sharp implementation of new ideas without proper consultation. It is worth remembering that most senior staff and those due to be assessed by the doomed MTAS system had no idea of what would be involved days before it commenced.
Communication is the essence of good medical practice. But in this instance a complete lack of communication between the bureaucrats and most of the medical profession existed.
It is worth noting that medical education and training in the UK was one of the best in the world and is acknowledged as having been so in the Tooke report. What remains to be seen is whether the calamitous system implemented will have a lasting detrimental effect on British health care.
